“So, just like everyone else? Thats what is bothering you, isn’t it? The fact that you have to experience the same things as the rest of us, the masses.”

An interesting point made in a conversation about a personal situation in my life. I had just finished telling my friend that its “not my style,” and “thats not how I normally am,” or even “that is just not me, I don’t make those mistakes, I don’t allow those responses.” She sat across from me and pointed out the obvious. I don’t like to be lumped into the greater masses of humanity. I don’t. As we all tell each other and mostly ourselves that we are special and different, I am walking down the back end of one of the most common mistakes that can be found, it is a shame I guess that it took me thirty years to make it (or more importantly to learn from it.)

They say that to fall in love is the demonstration of our humanity. Or, maybe they don’t, and I just came up with that. I have lived my life as a realist with the desire of a romantic. Staring at the skies, dreaming away the here-and-now for a distant future. Yet I have always grounded myself in the reality of the moment; the shifting landscape of my life and my instability. My world around a card table, with the deck open and the cards laid bare; in a rash and desperate gamble I went “all in.” Was it a bluff, God, yes it might have been. For I have no idea what would have happened if I had won this hand. But, even as I pushed my chips forward I knew the outcome. Deep down, where my rational and disciplined mind still churned away, angry and pissed that it was being ignored and pushed to the side, yelled out “bloody hell, what a fucking mess.” It is this aspect that my friend was trying to tell me makes us human. That our desires will overpower our most basic survival mechanisms. That logic and reason can be lost to the temptation of passion. That we are willing to ignore all of our other senses to hide the most basic truths around us. That I could be blind to such transgressions that would make the relationship almost untenable no matter how the cards fell.

We look out across the world and our senses are bombarded by the graphic displays of love, romance, fairy-tails, heartache… It is on our TVs, played out in movies, and dominate the music we listen to. Yet, avoidance of these logical failures is almost impossible as our basic needs drive us towards relationships, and companionship. No, I did not want to be like one of the many, I wanted to be strong, different, rational and still in control. And as my control slipped and my desperation climbed, I could feel my dignity slowly slip out between my fingers. Dignity; that is the hardest part about this. I wish I had quit the situation a day earlier, a week earlier, a month earlier; but I couldn’t. I held onto what we all do in trying times, hope. Misplaced, unreturned, and torturous for a man who has stated time and time again that hope is not a method.

Clearly by this point I have given you enough to understand what the general situation must be in this relationship. Well, what was a relationship, for the ultimate in todays modern, hip-generation of closure is the de-friending of someone on Facebook, thank you Mark Zuckerburg. So we moved full circle from where we never made it official, meaning no Facebook status, to officially over, because we are no longer Facebook friends. Such is life, such is life, God I hate those words, I hate the prospect that the loss of my dignity, the time spent thinking over each word said, each action taken, or each word not said, could end up being nothing more than a personal lesson to take forward with me to the next. I have hurt others, but I have always been honest; and now I have been hurt, though this is the only time that you will read it, or hear me say it. I am stronger than that, just as each of you are. She was not honest in her dealings with me, and gave me a false sense of hope and security. A girl, no more than a child playing at adulthood, could not fathom what was going on around her. And I forced her to make a decision in the face of my honesty, one that should could not make for weeks (or without her parents,) until finally she said no, “stop pushing–please.”

Am I like the rest of you? Clearly. Have I ever been different, no. No, in the sense that humanity shares more similarities than differences. No, in the idea that as I travel around the world and discover that every culture shares ideas, values and dreams. I am one of the rest, though maybe more stubborn at times. The concept that my uniqueness is unique in and of itself is an allusion. For if each fingerprint is different, if each grove is unique, then are we not all the picture of the 1960’s Berkley students sitting on the wall -demonstrating their individuality by all looking the same? In the shadow of our electronic personas maybe we have created (engineered) an even more separate account of who we are, allowing for the differences in time, location and ability to give us space to shape who and what we want to be; forever changing the nature of truth and how we share truths or how we create a uniqueness. In the end the truth is that you move on, you learn, adapt, accept, and maybe even grieve (I am sure this sounds more like an AA meeting now than a blog.) for a moment, though I have always claimed to be different, separate, alone; for just a moment, I was a stereotype, a cliche’, a story so old that never needs retelling because of its ubiquitous nature. For those weeks, days, hours and minutes I was as all star-crossed lost souls are; hurt, weak, and shameful in the shedding of my pride to win a prize that was never mine.

So another day forward, one less minute spent on a problem that was solved two weeks ago. Another day forward, and one less minute.